The Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants programme has been awarding grants to support work at the grassroots level on gender-related issues in ICTs for agricultural and rural development since 2002. The geographic focus is African, Caribbean and Pacific regions. This book tells the story of the GenARDIS journey thus far, provides lessons learned, stories from grantees and recommendations for policy makers. It shows how the project facilitates local capacity building in ICTs to empower women and gives grassroots initiatives the kick-start they need to bring about economic empowerment in their communities.

As David Dolly, based at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, GenARDIS grantee 2005 and jury member 2008, says:
“The GenARDIS projects provided numerous practical insights regarding how ICTs can promote successful gendered outcomes for livelihoods, food security and food sovereignty.

In Uvira, Democratic Republic of Congo, women’s cassava root crops were being destroyed by pests but thanks to some internet training, they increased their healthy crop production and agricultural knowledge. In the Dominican Republic, women from an agro-processing cooperative learned to better manage their production thanks to an ICT training -many of them were 50 years old or more, which is “old” and “good for nothing” by rural Dominican standards. Find out more about what GenARDIS projects were able to achieve with small grants of about 7000 euros.

Rural Ethiopian woman has opportunities through technology Women in rural areas play a central role in the agricultural economy of their region, which means that they often work long hours, leaving little time for learning how to use new technologies. Yet, access to new technologies affect both men and women in remote areas. In a new publication, GenARDIS 2002 – 2010: Small grants that made big changes for women in agriculture Jenny Radloff explores how seed grants that were disbursed to innovative initiative
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Access to new information and communications technologies (ICTs) affects both men and women living in remote areas. Governments and the telecommunications sector do not prioritise infrastructure in rural areas because the population is generally poor and dispersed.

Telecentre in Uvira, DRC: Men and women in Uvira, DRC, working in a new telecentre.Illiteracy, lack of electricity and poor infrastructure are just some of the challenges that are preventing rural women from benefiting from ICTs. But these gender-related challenges are often overlooked by policy makers, and policies that are developed that don’t consider the specific context of rural men and women are more likely to fail, as they will not meet the needs of everyone equally. This is why the inclusion of gender must be considered in the policy process. What exactly can local and national policy makers do in order to address some of these issues? Policy analyst Sonia Jorge gives some insights.

From an equity perspective, the most basic ICT policy goal should be to increase affordable access to ICTs for all women and men, regardless of geographic location, language, age, race and social class.

GenARDIS round III: Photo taken of grantees at the final workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa during the knowledge sharing workshop. March 2010.In March GenARDIS grant winners met for the last time after more than a year of innovative research and work to improve rural women’s lives in countries like Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic and Zambia. With projects as diverse as community radio drama groups, pest control through information access and using technology to promote women’s inheritance and land rights, projects were as diverse as the countries they came from. But as this third round of small grants winds down, participants are determined to scale up their work.

Why GenARDIS?

GenARDIS is for the deaf woman in Ethiopia who can now generate her own income through digital photography.